felt his eyes fixed upon me as he slowly put the curved end of the bow on the ground, held it down with his foot and leaned over to haul the string back into position. Even in that brief motion, he seemed to fade before me. Tears stung my eyes and I felt ashamed. Was this how I would face my death? At least Sigurd would not see me: through all the commotion he still lay unconscious under his blanket, eyes shut. Though he, too, seemed to be fading away from me. Is this how death comes, I wondered, the world gradually thinning to a mist as we recede from it? Warmth suffused my body; my head felt light, while at the door the knight loaded his bolt.
A ball of fire fell like a star from the sky and I looked up in horror. Death was reaching out for me, but it would not be the quick passage I had hoped for. A gaping hole had opened in the roof, fringed with a jagged halo of burning straw spreading ever outwards as it devoured the thatch. Flames licked high above it.
Whether the Frank with the crossbow decided the fire would do his work for him, or whether he simply did not see us in the smoke and darkness, I never found out. He loaded his bow, then turned and disappeared down the corridor. In the madness of those moments I almost called him back so I could die quickly, but he would not have heard me. And I would die soon enough.
Ash and soot rained down on us, as if we sat in the grate of an enormous hearth. Across the room, I could see one of the Varangians stretching forward like a horse pulling its reins, still trying even now to escape. The swirl of smoke and flame made illusions of the world, so that for a second I could almost imagine that he had managed to free himself. Shadows rose above him so that he seemed to be standing; they moved across the room, shifting and turning as if ducking away from the falling embers.
A hot shard pressed against my wrist, searing flesh already chafed raw by my bonds. The roof-beams had started to burn, and a piece of debris must have fallen on me. I screamed and squirmed, trying to dislodge it, but it had a will of its own and would not go away. It writhed against my skin; it slithered back and forth, so I could almost imagine it was eating away at the ropes that bound me.
‘Get up.’
The smoke and tears that clogged my eyes had all but blinded me. Now I forced my eyes open and looked up. One of the Varangians was standing over me. His bonds were gone, and in his hand he held the long-bladed knife Pakrad’s guard had dropped.
‘Am I dreaming?’
‘You will be if we don’t hurry. Come on.’
One by one, he knelt in front of the others and cut the ropes that bound them. I followed through the heat and flame, trying to coax life into limbs that smoke and despair had left numb. Last of all, we came to Sigurd. His face was peaceful, and he seemed to be sleeping beneath his blanket. We cut through his shackles as carefully as we could, then I gently slapped his cheek.
‘Can you hear me?’
He groaned, but did not open his eyes.
In a torrent of confusion and haste, I beckoned two of the Varangians over. They slid their arms under his shoulders and lifted. As Sigurd rose, the blanket slid away leaving him entirely naked, but there was no time to dress him. Choking and coughing, we stumbled out into the corridor. Aelfric was the last through the door — and not a second too soon, for an instant later the makeshift beams gave way and the entire roof crashed down into our gaol. A cloud of sparks and burning straw blasted out through the door like dragon’s breath, blackening the stones and singeing our heads.
Two of Pakrad’s men lay dead in the passage, pierced with crossbow bolts, but there was no sign of any enemies living. Looking up into the sky, I could see that the ancient monastery had become a cauldron of fire. Even the stones seemed to burn.
‘This way.’ A dark blizzard of ash and soot assailed us as we staggered down the passage into the old monastery church. At least here there was little for the fire to take hold of, and the remaining portion of the stone roof might shelter us from the burning missiles raining down. We hurried into its shadow.
‘Where now?’ I bellowed in Aelfric’s ear.
‘Up there.’
In the curved bay at the end of the church, a high window looked out to the east. Its lower half had been blocked in with stones and mortar, but there was still enough space at the top for a man to squeeze through. If he could reach it.
‘How do we get there?’
‘On the shoulders of better men.’ In a niche in the southern wall, a life-sized statue of the prophet Daniel watched over the monastery’s desolation. Rain had smoothed his features to the primordial canvas of the first man, birds had fouled him, and white pock-marks on his chest showed where Pakrad’s men had used him to practise their archery, but he still stood. No wonder: it took six of the Varangians just to pry him from his alcove and drag him to the space under the window. I watched the door, praying the invaders would not drive Pakrad’s men back to this place. It was hard to believe any could have survived the inferno, though every so often the hot wind still carried the cries of men and horses to my ears.
A thought struck me. ‘What’s on the other side of that wall?’
But there was no time for doubts. One of the Varangians made a stirrup with his hands and lifted me up; another kept the statue from toppling over as I scrabbled for balance on its shoulders. From that height, I could just stretch my hands to the rough lip where the window opened. A day and a half in bondage had left my wrists raw and my arms numb; there was little power in them, but somehow I managed to keep my grip and haul myself up: first my chin, then my chest, and eventually my whole body. Urgent shouts from below spurred me on, though I did not have the strength to care what they were saying.
I reached the crumbling window ledge and crouched under its arch. Behind me, high tongues of flame licked into the night — ahead was only darkness.
‘Go on!’ shouted Aelfric’s voice below. ‘Out of the way.’
I jumped. It was the leap of a madman: from a high window, on a cliffbound mountain top, into darkness. If I had fallen a thousand feet and impaled myself on jagged rocks, it would have been no more than I deserved. But God was with me that night. The ground was hard, but not far. I struck it with a yelp of pain, jarring my knees, feeling my ankle turn beneath me, and rolled away in a cascade of dust and pebbles until a thorn tree brought me to a stop. After the inferno in the monastery, the night seemed cool and quiet. The smell of sagegrass filled my senses.
I do not know what I answered — I was almost past thinking. I lay there, while one by one the Varangians crawled out through the window and dropped to the ground. Somehow they managed to manhandle Sigurd’s naked body onto the ledge, and then lower it down. By that time, I had recovered enough that I could stand and hobble over to look at him. His face was deathly pale, scratched and bruised from being squeezed through the window.
‘Sigurd?’
Whether he understood, or whether it was just reflex, his eyes flicked open. They looked vague and distant, but after a moment they seemed to focus on me.
‘Demetrios,’ he said, and I felt a thrill of hope. ‘You shit.’
6
We had escaped — but not far. In the darkness, our heads still reeling from the smoke we had breathed, we did not dare try to find our way down. Even if there had been a path, we could never have managed to carry Sigurd. We found a small ledge in the mountainside, almost hidden by the gorse bushes that fringed it, and settled down to wait.
The monastery burned on, lighting up the western sky with its glow and filling the night with the crashing sounds of ruination. The noise wrought havoc on my nerves as I sat hunched on my rock: with each falling beam or collapsing wall, I was convinced I heard the footsteps of an unseen enemy about to discover us.
Eventually, when the fresh light in the east matched the sullen glow in the west, I left our hiding place and crawled back up the slope. I could see the high wall of the monastery church and the window we had escaped
